Chapter
Nine
Malyr Past, City of Valtaris
he Court of Ravens has been moved underground, so I suggest Prince Malyr flies to our line of“T pathfinders over here.” Captain Asker pointed at the bone-carved figurines, all of them sitting on a cliff chiseled from stone on the left of Father’s strategy table. “About two hundred of Barat’s archers took over the temple plateau. They’re currently shooting at the fates we sent out on the battlefield before the gate. As long as arrows keep whistling at them, distracting them from their visions, they won’t be able to cut through the cavalry—a problem that our pathfinders can solve quickly and with little risk…” Asker paused, driving up my pulse. “If only the prince would weave his shadows thick and broad, hiding our pathfinders in their plumes.”
Weave my shadows.
Darkness shifted at my core.
Scratching. Scraping.
I crossed my arms behind my back, hiding trembling fingers that had gone numb when Barat’s army had appeared on the red horizon. Sun. Moon. Stars. Each of them guiding beacons. What did that say about a blood-streaked sky at dawn?
“He will do it,” Harlen answered in my stead, my brother ever so eager to practice his role as heir and future king, but I heard the tension in his voice. Saw how he raked his palm over his three black braids with a single, nervous motion. “Will you not, Malyr?”
Everyone’s gaze slid my way, full of heavy expectations that stiffened my muscles. Even Mother looked over from where she held Naya’s hand, helping her balance on the low stone wall that enclosed the breezy pavilion. Only my little sister remained unfazed, finding joy in hopping from stone to stone, her long dark hair crowned by a circle of daisies.
Sweet little Naya, so innocent, so blissfully unaware of the war waging around her.
My throat narrowed the longer I watched her while everyone else was watching me. What if me releasing such a vast, unpredictable amount of my shadows was necessary to deliver us from this attack? I wanted to do my part in protecting our kingdom, but… What if I couldn’t protect it from me?
My breathing quickened under the constraint of my black cuirass, the weight of leather strangely heavy compared to the velvet of my usual shadowcloth tunics. “Two hundred of their archers…”
Father shifted beside me in his silver armor, his sword of black aerymel sheathed by his side.
There wasn’t a fate better with the blade in all Vhaerya, Asker kept telling him whenever they sparred, each thrust of their swords guided by visions. Dreadfully boring, watching two fates fight, none of them ever landing a hit… “Numbers mean nothing, Malyr.” He stroked his beard, his focus on the table once more, his hair put into a tight braid. “A thousand Ravens can decimate an army of humans ten times that. You mustn’t
fear them.”
“I don’t fear them.”
I feared myself.
Didn’t trust this wild, vicious blackness inside my chest. How it writhed and slithered, twisting at my core, carving itself through the gap in my ribs in an attempt to escape my meager control.
My gift.
My curse.
One that had brought about three days of feasting once I revealed at age seven. Father had held a speech about how proud he was, having a deathweaver in the Khysal line once more. Voids had patted my head and squeezed my cheeks, enticed by the strength of my shadows. The strongest weaver since before the first word was written, they’d called me. I’d been so happy.
Until my shadows choked me.
Had escaped me that first night, ripping me from sleep with a death-strangle around my neck.
They hadn’t killed me; they’d killed my hound instead. One moment, Asadur had barked, then the next, he’d whimpered, collapsed, and soiled himself.
So I’d kept them inside me. Imprisoned the most vicious of my shadows behind flesh and bone, sensing them grow stronger, angrier, pacing the bars of my ribcage.
Against the weight of my parents’ expectations—the entire damn kingdom’s expectations—I shook
my head. “I cannot.”
Father sighed. “Not this again…”
“My prince Malyr,” Asker said. “Have we not practiced your weaving? You can do this!”
“He can, and he will!” Father slammed his fists on the slab of carved stone hard enough, the table quivered and caused several figurines to fall and roll around. “This is war, and I won’t have my son hide in the chambers with the women and children while Ravens spill their blood for the realm and their royals!”
Shadows twisted at my core. Scratching. Scraping. Slithering along my veins and into my fingers, urging me to wrap them around Father’s throat.
I gripped the amulet that hung from my neck instead. Clasped it tightly, allowing it to calm my nerves and shadows alike, this white salt stone surrounded by a socket of black aerymel.
Where are you? I need you.
“My king…” I looked at Father, holding his stare that had long lost whatever pride they’d held on the day of his speech. “I am of no use to you in fighting off this attack. Merely a liabi—”
A tremor rocked the earth.
Dust rilled from the mortar between the stone columns that held up the roof. A deafening sound echoed across the sanctum, making me spin around just in time to see how a part of the highest watchtower crumbled into the depth.
“Blast these featherless cunts!” Father shouted, hand going to the pommel of his sword. “What now?”
Asker gaped at the damage. “Brisden’s catapults must have arrived and hit the tower. They’re trying to put Valtaris under siege.”
“Honorless cunts!” Father’s hand landed heavily on my shoulders as he pulled me toward him, bringing us face to face. “Fly! Find the pathfinders and lead them like is expected of you. Protect them from our enemy’s arrows!”
“My shadows do not protect,” I ground out. “All they do is kill.”
“That’ll serve us just fine. Now do as you are bid, Malyr, or I swear, I’ll tie your ravens—”
“Omaniel.” Mother stepped up beside us with Naya sitting on her hip, her dark hair beautifully pinned up with black clasps shaped like feathers, placing her hand on his wrist to calm the shadows at Father’s core. “Do not be so harsh on him.”
Father removed her touch. “No, Elnora. I have watched this one hide from his gift for far too long.
This is war! Do you hear me, Malyr? These humans are spreading lies. Dishonoring your father, shaming your mother! Do your duty by this family and unleash your shadows. Let them cut, bite, and choke through every human who dares mean us harm!”
His shout jabbed at my shadows, making them slither and slink just as I contracted every muscle in my body, my entire focus on holding them back. “I cannot… control… them. Not to this degree. Not while standing at the center of chaos and slaughter. They do not do as they are commanded, but as they please.”
“You will control them today!” He squeezed my arms, distracting muscles that struggled to hold back my gift. “Time to step up to your fate. Time to be a man. Serve the house Khysal!”
“Enough!” Mother pressed herself between us, placed her hand on the back of my head, and pulled until my forehead rested against hers. “Why the goddess placed this curse into your cradle, I cannot say, but you mustn’t succumb to its darkness. Now go!” With one quick move, she lifted Naya from her hip and reached her to me. “Take her to the lower chambers and play with her until this is over. I love you.”
I inhaled a deep breath, taking in the fading traces of her scent—rose petal and lemongrass. “I love you, too.”
I looked over at Harlen, who gave me a curt nod. A gesture that sent a chill down my spine, but it had nothing on the frigidness of Father’s voice.
“It’s a good thing you’re the spare, Malyr,” he said. “I swear on the goddess, you were born worthless.”
His words struck deep, rendering me mute as I turned. I carried Naya along the pathway between
the gardens and towers that lined to our sides.
“We go fjy?” she asked and bounced on my hip, pointing at the sky. “Up there? In the sky? Majyr fjy and Naya jook?”
“Not today, little bird. How about you show me that doll Father gave you, hmm?” When dark tendrils hushed across her chunky arm, I intertwined my hand with her much smaller one, and lowered her to the ground. “Uh-uh, no shifting. The last thing we need is Naya’s fledglings hopping around a siege. Come on. Walk.”
Something thrummed the air, letting a warning cord vibrate in my chest. A loud boom followed, and the ground shook. Something sharp hit my head with a dull thud. What was happening?
“Majyyyr!”
Naya’s shout echoed around my spinning vision, quickly drowning under the moans of wood and the rumble of stone. Naya yanked at my arm. I squeezed her little hand as pain pricked my shoulder, my neck. It encapsulated all of me, ripping me to the ground.
Still, I held her hand.
I stared at the ground, weighed down by heaviness. The faster I blinked my eyes, the more they burned, blurring my vision. One hand wiped the dust and grit from my face. The other tugged Naya
toward me.
She refused.
“Naya. Come to me…” Another tug as I struggled to my knees, letting a piece of rock or masonry shift off me. “Naya! We need to get away from here.”
Disoriented and with a ringing in my ears, I looked down at our intertwined hands. My gaze followed the red cuts and wounds that speckled her arm. Higher. Higher. Stone.
“Nooo!” Mother’s high-pitched screech pierced through my muffled surroundings. “Nayaaa!”
I looked up, watching Mother’s distorted outline collapse to its knees as she stared at me. Father stood beside her, paralyzed. Only Asker and Harlen moved, running toward us, shouting something.
Shift the tomes? Lift the tomes? Stones?
Head throbbing, I looked down at Naya, but all I saw was her mangled arm poking out from stone.
Stone everywhere. Beside me. Around us. On top of her?
My stomach heaved. My chest convulsed as I reached for the angular boulder that rested where her head should have been as blood-streaked the horizon. I pushed at it. Shifted it until a red daisy came into view, sitting between a tangle of black hair, splintered white bone, and oozing pinkish-gray
creases. No…
My chest caved.
Naya. My sweet, innocent Naya.
It started in my heart, the pain that cracked through my chest. Gnawed itself through the gap in my ribs one vicious bite at a time. Scratching. Scraping.
Shadows surged out of me in a burst of black tendrils. They slithered into the sky at a rapid speed, casting a darkness over the sanctum that chilled the air. Ravens fell from the heavens as a result, thudding to the ground where they writhed, flapping their wings between my shadowy tendrils that crawled over the ground in all directions at once.
They curled around Asker and Harlen, where they’d come to a dead-halt only a few feet from me, spreading their offshoots toward my parents.
Letting my hand slip from Naya’s, I rose and stumbled toward them. “No… not them. Not them!”
The moment I stepped into a thick fog of shadows, excruciating pain clawed at my legs. Like strangling vines, my own shadows wrapped around me, anchoring me down as they climbed higher.
I tried to absorb the shadows back into me. Commanded them to return.
They did not listen.
Freed at last, they cloaked my parents in blackness, swallowing them whole until their shouts faded into silence—a silence that soon spread across all of Valtaris, turning kingdom to crypt.
“Malyr…” Asker’s voice broke through the quiet behind me. “What have you done?”
